My pictures are spread all over the world. On the one hand it is a great honour, but on the other hand, many of my pictures are on websites on which I do not want to have them. For the newer galleries (since #122) I put a light copyright logo over my pictures but when scaling down the images size, the logo gets unvisible. Because the most of my pictures get posted on blogs and services like flickr, facebook, google+, tumblr, ect in a smaller version, I had to create a more visible logo. Unfortunately this is also more disturbing the picture it self - but there are no other way to protect my pictures or at least state the correct creator.


     Detail, left: 100% magnification, middle: 50% magnification, right: 25% magnification

Examples for down scaled pictures (400px or 1/5 of the original image size):

     The copyright-logo is barely visible.

To create a visible copyright-logo it is necessary to have a high contrast in the logo. It should be visible on top of bright (white) and dark (black) areas, so the best way is to make sure the logo is visible you need white and black at the same time. I've create a transparent lettering with non-transparent white outline and a black inner line.
The size of the lines of the characters need to be at least the size of the factor the original image can be scaled down without loosing the visibility of the logo. If I want to have a visible logo on a image with a lenght of the long edge of 400px, the line width of the characters in the original picture (2000px) have to be at least 5px. That would be a very thick line, so I softened the lines and come out with a line with of about 3px for the white and 3px for the black lines. Usually the letters will be still visible even when some pixels are missing.


     Lettering on bright and dark background, always visible. Right: detail at 100% magnification

Due to people like to cut off the logo on pictures before posting it somewhere else, an efficient copyright-logo need to cover the main part of the pictures. I've just centered it, so its not possible to just cut off a small part of the picture to remove the logo.

The additional copyright-lettering looks like that:

     left: a small version from a picture of gallery 134, middle: a 100% detail on a bright area, right: a 100% detail on a dark area


Well, I know this addition logo is annoying but there are only few other ways to pretent stolen pictures:
   1. take boring / not interesting pictures
   2. publish only very bad image quality
   3. take pictures that are already out there a million times ---- All not an option for me!
Sure, the pictures still can be reposted but the original creator will be visible always. Because there is no respect for creative / intellectual property on the web the additional copyright-logo is without alternative. People reposting my pictures calling me names when I ask them to remove the pictures or at least state the original source and link to my page. Even flickr / Yahoo are not interested in deleting stolen pictures!
Yahoo (flickr) makes it extra hard to fulfill a copyright infringement and to proof that you are the rights owner (especially for non-americans). The links to the orignal source seems to be not enough. I can not proof (says flickr) that I'm the only owner of the rights, my word is too weak or just doesn't constitute. The orignal files out of the camera will not be accepted (no attatchments in email correspondences with flickr allowed). If it goes badly, flickr will delete my account - people who reporting are unwanted and not appreciated (that happend to others before and was maybe a reason for my deleted account long time ago).

Yahoo is a company that wants as much images on their services as possible, where the images are from and who are posting them does not matter. Due to the different international laws and the low risk of institute proceedings Yahoo and the people posting stolen content don't have to be afraid of any prosecution. There are hundrets of flickr-accounts with only stuff collected from the web with thousands of stolen images - I guess that most of the fetish and erotic pictures on flickr are stolen. Good for flickr, but a kick up the arse for all photographers.
Thats like the most image / blog servies behave. There is no free lunch... the subscriber of a free service is not a customer, they are the product.

Yep, I know thats the internet and just how it works today. Maybe its better to stop taking pics by my self and just repost pictures from someone else...
Like I already wrote on 28.April.2012, feel free to save my pictures on your private harddisk, but do not repost, do not pose as the creator and don't take it as your advertisment! [all rights reserved!]